Now that took some effort and pre-planning to take a fish that big. It almost had to be an inside job. Sadly, they probably won't survive. Sandy

"Probably a heron..I always go out first thing inn spring to make sure they all made the winter.I had a few 12" long ,some fancy tailed about 8" long they were fine.Th next week I looked they were all gone.A few times after that I saw a heron fly over house sqawking.He was saying "the fish were good down there........

Sunday update: My box still just has an empty nest. I wonder if it's a dummy nest????? Only saw the sparrow once today, but the wrens were around once too. Ugh. Wish the bluebirds would nest in my box, but at least both male and female are coming to my yard to eat mealworms. My neighbor's box had one egg in it today! Being that they are out of town, I am monitoring their box. We put up a baffle (metal stovepipe) and made and installed a sparrow spooker today. It is quite the spooker too! We actually bought fringed mylar and stapled it to the dowels after priming and painting them so they will hold up in the weather. We made three spookers, hoping I will need one and made one for another neighbor too. Question: Is there anything we can do to keep the wrens away?

So "funny" that this came up again. I'm sorry to hear that the box is still missing but glad that they are still working on locating it. After my valentine's mishap you'd think that I would have learned, but NO. I sent a birthday gift, this time express mail - $22 and change to ship a 1.5 lb package, but I wanted to ensure it would get there ON his birthday and did not trust priority mail after the last mishap. Part of me wanted to use fedex but I figured express mail would get there... this is what happened. I send the stupid thing on monday to arrive by noon on tuesday. I am watching tracking all day and it's out for delivery at 8:34am, supposed to be there by noon, no updates until early this morning when it updates to say that there is no further available tracking information. I go to my local (small town) po and he prints the internal tracking and it says basically that there was no one to sign for the package. I can't believe it, it is going to a company, SOMEONE is there at 10:57AM... so my local PO guy calls their PO and this is the story. Apparently there is a p*ssing match going on between the PO and the company. The company has 2 buildings across the street from each other and wants to receive all mail and packages at one building, call it building 2. The PO is refusing to deliver anything addressed for building 1 to building 2, so basically they are fighting about this and the PO is being completely inflexible. So I addressed it to building 1 not knowing this. I guess in cost saving measures, they no longer have a receptionist at the front desk at building 1 so anything that needs to be signed for at building 1 gets a slip and they have to go to the PO to pick it up, rather than being brought over to building 2 where the receiving department is. So no problem, right? I address it to this person, he has a company id with his name and the company as well as a state issued driver's license... he should be able to pick it up, right? No, apparently there is a list of people who are authorized to pick up mail for the company and he is not on the list (even though it is addressed to them). Apparently, since they sometimes handle government contracts, the only people authorized to pick up any packages are those with a certain level of clearance (that he happens to have). In order for him to be able to pick up this package (which is a birthday gift almost entirely hand made that I spent countless hours on but not worth much in actual materials or anything) he had to have the head security officer of the company authorize him to pick up packages (he does have the proper clearance and should have been on the list to begin with). The only problem is that the head security officer is in ICELAND right now. So an international conference call later, my friend was able to pick up his birthday gift (a day late) and I have the worst case of heartburn of my life. Something that was meant to be a nice gesture ended up taking a few hours of his time and a lot of running around, not to mention what must have been embarrassing phone calls to an island in the middle of the freakin' north atlantic to resolve. :-p BTW I do not think that anyone who receives packages in the receiving department has any kind of clearance. The package was addressed to a specific person and my PO thought it was crazy that they were being so prickish but he said that he definitely got the sense that they are having a big fight and my package just got stuck in the middle. I am never using USPS again, and I REALLY mean it this time!